Using the jigsaw, I traced the lines I had made earlier to get a precise cut. It’s really helpful to mark your lines before you begin with the jigsaw, it ensures not just ease in cutting, but guarantees a precise cut.

The front and back panels of the cabin were to be of the same dimension, so I cut out two identical shapes out of the plywood. It took a bit of finesse as the shape I intended to cut was curvy and tapering.

Having been open for a month now, the new-paint-smell had barely lost its edge, when the lovely folks from Hackaday reached out to see if we’d like to host the 2015 Hackaday Prize Worldwide event at our Delhi space. We couldn’t have been more excited. A week or so of planning and co-ordinating culminated into the event we hosted on the 18th of July, 2015. We’d planned a workshop followed by a show-n-tell and some quick talks and demos.

Despite it raining sporadically on the morning of the event, a sizeable crowd flocked to the asylum, some even coming in from as far as Bangalore. Walking in, there was a light spread laid out - grab a sandwich, a cookie perhaps, some coffee and wait for the workshop to start.

One of the key tools at any workshop is the Laser Cutter, so needless to say we were excited when ours was delivered to us at the Delhi Asylum a couple days after our launch. Like any industrial product it came packaged in a wooden crate to ensure safety in transit. At the time we put away the crate into our junk area, excited as we were about the laser cutter.

A few days later however, on seeing the crate getting drenched in the rain, an idea popped up in my head - an idea that looked like a bench. Convinced that it needed to be done with as little usage of resources as possible, I decided to give it a shot.

With the wood in place, and the tools available at the Asylum, it seemed a simple enough build. But there were a few small details that needed to be sorted out first. So I spent about 20 minutes selecting the perfect planks needed for the build.

I wanted to keep it simple, so I cut up the planks into equal lengths and used plywood as a base upon which to fix them.

Initially my idea was to nail the planks directly on to the plywood but the plywood that I found in our scrap area wasn’t thick enough to be penetrated by 3mm nails. Had I tried to hammer in the nails, it would have damaged the plywood.

Instead of nailing the planks on to the plywood, I strengthened the plywood with small wooden columns. This effectively increased the thickness of the plywood.

Joining the first plank with the two plywood supports at the ends was little tricky. There was a risk of ruining the symmetry if done incorrectly. So I used 3’ C-clamps on both ends to join the plank with the pillars at each end. Without the need of holding the plank and supporting structure with my hands I could easily take measurements and make adjustments. Satisfied with my work so far, I hammered in the nails and removed the clamps.

With the base of the bench in place, I had to make a backrest for sake of comfort.I had already cut the base plywood such that it could be fixed with the planks placed vertically on it. So I did the same as I had earlier, and attached wooden columns to the plywood, and nailed the planks onto the columns. At the top end of the backrest I attached a plank horizontally, so small objects could be placed upon it. An aded convenience.

With the backrest in place, I made grooves into the backrest, where the planks for the arm rest could be slid into. A simple solution for a simple problem. To hold the weight evenly, I added pillars underneath the planks, and with that I was done with the arm rests.

Finish

With the bench made, it was all about finishing it. I decided to keep it simple, and sanded it down to an even texture across the bench, and also used it to carve out some curves as needed. To finish it off, I coated the entire thing in simple wood varnish, both to give it a sheen, as well as to protect it from the elements.

With the prevalence of Arduino and easy to use micro-controller platforms, people often overlook analog circuits. Our Delhi Interns Gursehaj and Karmanya wanted to make a completely analog version of a common digital circuit and given Karmanya’s predilection for LEDs, they decided to make a VuMeter.

A VU meter represents the amplitude of an incoming audio signal, mostly for aesthetic purposes. The heart of the circuit is the LM3914 display driver. The driver takes input in the form of a signal from 0-5 Volts and represents the amplitude of the signal in either bar or dot form. The chip also regulates current to the LEDs which reduces the number of resistors or other components in the circuit as the entire circuit can run off any 9-12V supply.

This this circuit the 3914 driver is connected to 30 leds, with 3 parallel leds connected to each pin. The leds themselves are of the ultra bright variety and their light gets diffused through the drinking straws. A potentiometer between pin 7 on the chip and ground controls the current supplied to each led.

We used an opamp (AD620) to amplify the signal from the audio jack (~200mV peak to peak) and bring it between 0-5V which the 3914 required. The advantage of using an AD620 or LM386 is that they both require only a gain resistor between pins 1 and 8 to manipulate your opamp gain. Going by the datasheet of the AD620, another potentiometer was used so that different sources (phones,laptops etc) could be accounted for.

I'm Madhu! I'm an illustrator and I run my own company called Something Sketchy, where I put my illustrations on products like notebooks, coaster-magnets, postcards and calendars for retail. I'm currently in 15 stores across 9 cities in India through Landmark, and 4 stores in NYC where I spent last summer doing a couple of courses at the School of Visual Arts.

I love traveling and meeting new artists (I've started an illustrator's group called The Sketchup too), and since I can work from anywhere, I decided to spend 3 months in Delhi this February, helping with the St+art India street art festival, meeting the international artists who were coming down and painting a mural of my own for the festival.

I'd been to the Maker's Asylum (Bandra Garage version) in October of 2014, which was my first interaction with them, and I really loved the concept. I met with Vaibhav while he was visiting in Delhi and he suggested I use the wall of the new Maker's Asylum building in Delhi, for my St+art India mural.

Visiting the Site

When I first stepped into the Maker's Asylum compound, I spotted two metal lamps cemented to the ground on opposite sides of the plot. They looked like jellyfish to me and the "two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl" line came to mind. I began to visualize an underwater theme for the downstairs of the building.

For the main 30ft x 19ft wall that began about 10ft off the ground, both Inti and 1010, (artists from Chile and Germany who were down for the festival and had seen some of my work) suggested that my signature abstract type style on the large wall might be a good idea. After a quick discussion with Vaibhav, we locked in on the Maker's Asylum motto - "Pass it On" - to be hidden in the abstract style type in the mural.

Initially we considered a ladder, but decided to go with this awesome piece of equipment called the Scissorlift (it had 'Manlift' stamped on the side but we often referred to it as the 'Womanlift') and it really, truly made life so much easier, and much more fun.

On the 17th of April, I completed the outlines of the design on the right side of the staircase and the black paint outlines. In the evening when Swati came to help after work, we realised that the lift wasn't the easiest thing to maneuver underneath the staircase, so once we got it there we decided to complete that side of the wall completely before moving back to the right side again.
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On the 18th, it was so hot that Swati devised a canopy for us to paint under, while in the lift. We finished the black outlines and had help from Rashika in the morning and Maan and Tarun in the evening. Four of us stood on the lift, each armed with a colour and filled them in to music. This was the fun bit and my favourite part.

Swati Sinha, awesome graphic designer friend and my roommate in Delhi was the best painting partner and moral support a girl could ask for. Those were some good times we spent discussing, arguing, coming up with solutions and getting dead exhausted and gulping down ghanne ka juice together. Maan was a rockstar and handled a LOT of the legwork with the paintgun and painting when we were too tired to do it ourselves. Medhavi helped me a ton with towing the paint from place to place and generally being awesome moral support before we began. Rashika, Tarun and Premankan all lent a hand with painting. Suman uncle and Sanjeev uncle were extremely helpful and supportive with arranging the manlift for us, and Sanjeeta aunty sent us the yummiest food! Rakesh was there throughout and was our go-to guy and Man Friday, and of course, Vaibhav made all of this possible.
Big thanks to you lovely people :)